Democratic US Senator Cory Booker accused President Donald Trump of "recklessly" challenging the nation's democratic institutions in a marathon speech that was approaching a record.
The 55-year-old New Jersey lawmaker in a speech that began at 7pm (midnight Irish time) yesterday and went on through the night and into this afternoon criticised the campaign by the Republican President and his key adviser Elon Musk, the world's richest person, to slash large swaths of the federal government.
"Our institutions are being recklessly and unconstitutionally attacked and even shattered," said Mr Booker, first elected to the Senate in 2013.
Mr Trump in his first weeks in office has moved to outright shutter government arms including the Department of Education, withhold congressionally approved spending and his administration has questioned the authority of the federal courts to constrain its policies.
Democratic voters have become restive in recent weeks as Mr Trump, backed by a Republican-controlled Congress, has shaken up long-established US alliances and cut more than 100,000 federal workers.
Their anger has been aimed both at Republican lawmakers and the party's own leaders, including top Senate Democrat Chuck Schumer, for cooperating with Senate Republicans to pass a government funding bill that averted a partial shutdown.
"Cory Booker is looking for another 'I am Spartacus' moment, but that didn't work for his failed presidential campaign, and it didn't work to block President Trump's Supreme Court nominee, Brett Kavanaugh," said deputy White House press secretary Harrison Fields.
Booker approaching Senate record for longest continuous speech
By this afternoon, Mr Booker was approaching the all-time Senate record for longest continuous speech held by the segregationist Senator Strom Thurmond of South Carolina.
In the summer of 1957 Mr Thurmond launched a filibuster against civil rights legislation that lasted 24 hours and 18 minutes.
In the end, Mr Thurmond failed in his mission to block a bill that expanded federal protections of voting rights for Black people.
Mr Booker's speech, since it is not aimed at a specific piece of legislation, is not technically considered a filibuster, though it has halted other Senate action.
The only breaks Mr Booker took were when a stream of fellow Democrats, one-by-one, came to the floor to ask him a question, allowing him to keep control of his speaking time.
Mr Booker was showing signs of strain.
When he dropped a piece of paper from his desk he looked down, very slowly and carefully began bending to pick it up only to be rescued by fellow Democratic Senator Michael Bennet of Colorado, who sprang to his aid.
A unifying theme of Mr Booker's wrath was Musk's campaign to slash the size and scope of the US government.
Mr Musk's targets - and thus Mr Trump's - include eliminating many US foreign aid programs and cutting workers at federal departments that provide public health services, healthcare to veterans and the Social Security Administration, which oversees federal retirement programs.
"The Trump-Vance administration continues to plunge us into chaos," Mr Booker said.
"Trump's trade war on our allies will only increase costs and fears for American families."
